When it first came out back in 1999 I bought, read and enjoyed Mammoth a novel from Stephen Baxter. I then found out it was aimed a the 'youth' market, and because at that age these things mattered (reading SF was bad enough, reading 'youth' SF, I don't think I could have stood the shame!) I didn't return to read books two or three in the Mammoth saga.
A few weeks ago I was browsing the shelves of my local discount book shop and found Icebones (Mammoth book 3) on the shelves. I had a holiday coming up, and thought it would make a good holiday read. One holiday later, what did I make of the book?
I enjoyed it immensely. Somehow Stephen seems to make it easy to become a Mammoth. I really felt a understood how a mammoth might think, might feel, his story telling was fantastic, this wasn't a 'what happens' story, in many ways the plot is a fairly basic 'road trip' story, but the changes you see in the characters, the involvement Stephen gives us in their lives just makes this a great story. I think you should read this if only to get the question I got from my wife. "So what are you reading then?", "Oh, a book about Mammoths..." pause as she rolls her eyes. "on Mars..." It sounds like a really bad B movie. It certainly doesn't read like one.
Ian
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